> WHAT WOULD A CITY look like if it suddenly needed 90 percent less parking?

...Amsterdam?

> Take New York City, where there are roughly 102,000 public parking spaces below 60th Street—taking up roughly 18.4 million square feet, a space equal to about half of Central Park.

> "San Francisco is going bananas for new housing, and Manhattan is always looking for space, and here we have this sitting in front of us," Samaras says. "That's what autonomous vehicles can do."

You don't actually ned autonomous cars to do this. Just get rid of the parking (or, start charging market rate for it, and use the money to fund transit).

There is an MTA trunk line on almost every avenue, and I'd argue that the ones without subway lines, as well as the major crosstown streets, should be turned into Portland Transit Malls. Enough with being nice to people that drive personal cars into Manhattan.

I'll pick on Seattle, as that's where I'm currently living.

To bus to my office, I have a 30 minute bus ride on one of the rapidride busses, then transfer to a king county metro bus. The second bus takes between 0 and 30 minutes to arrive, normally gets stuck in traffic on the route it takes, and arrives near my office in 10 to 30 minutes. This is assuming neither bus is full and picks people up at either stop.

On the best day, I'm on a bus for 40 minutes. On the worst, 90. That's 1.5-3 hours a day dealing with a commute.

Alternatively, if I drive, I leave when I want to and normally arrive in 15-20 minutes. On a good day I save an hour a day driving, and on a bad one almost 2 hours.

I'm all for public transit, when it works efficiently. We currently do not have a rail system that reaches the majority of our population (its being planned though). I can't justify the additional time for my commute, because I'd always have to plan for the worst.

The bright side is sound transit is working on a proposal to expand their existing light rail. I'm all for efficient, timely, and reliable public transportation. I live 4 miles from work. It shouldn't take up to 90 minutes for me to get there.

> I live 4 miles from work. It shouldn't take up to 90 minutes for me to get there.

That should be 20-30 min by bicycle :) is that an option?

In Seattle you're going to get pretty wet biking to work a significant percentage of the time. Depending on your job that might be an issue. (Or it might not at all. Before I worked from home I used to bike to work and shower there; it was great.)

Also though, not everyone is able or wants to power their own transportation, and although I think biking is great, I this choosing not to is also perfectly reasonable and should also be respected.

The weather isn't that much different to Amsterdam or Copenhagen.

But in both cities, buses have the exclusive use of some road space. This ensures a reliable journey time.

They (or Amsterdam at least) also have amazing bike lanes everywhere. I actually lived and commuted by bike in Ghent, Belgium for a few months, which is very similar. I did indeed get soaked on the way to work fairly frequently, but was able to shower there. I also felt very safe doing so, as bike lanes are everywhere.

You are correct. I'm slightly out of shape and working on it, hoping to start doing that by summer.

People drive because there is no public transport and there is no public transport because everybody drives. Making parking really expensive and funneling the money into improved public transport would probably change the situation.

Maybe you should look at bike parking in Netherlands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWESiQlmOC0 .

Helsinki: with bus and train 45min to work. It's a lot, but it's never more than hour.

By car? 30 minute drive because of the congestion. Then I either hunt 15 - 30 minutes for parking lot or pay 170 eur/month in a close by cellar of a mall. For comparison monthly ticker for the public transport is only 30 eur.

That's not the commute in Helsinki, it's just yours.

I, too, have one – with a car I drive about 15 minutes along the innermost “ring” road whereas any combination of public transport would require at least an hour for the worst case scenario. Yes, the trip takes longer in peak traffic; luckily I can avoid those times most of the time – and it's in any case way faster than with public transport.

It was comparatively worse when I had a much shorter commute to school years ago. The 3.5 km trip would consist of more than a kilometre of walking and would at worst take way more than half an hour with buses (including the switch, without one you'd have to walk more than half the distance). Needless to say, I did not prepare for the bad days, and was late quite often.

With a car, it was literally a five minute ride.

The point was that if you simply cut parking lots, the situation changes. Because then you need time for the "hunt a parking lot" while busses start to be on time as congestion decreases.

In Helsinki, especially before 550, certain trips are lot faster with car. Currenly my school comute is 25min by car and 1h by bus. The fucked up thing is that bus routes are so winding that they compete with bicycle in speed and reach.

Is that a discount price? I think one month is over 50e.

> "San Francisco is going bananas for new housing, and Manhattan is always looking for space, and here we have this sitting in front of us," Samaras says. "That's what autonomous vehicles can do."

Wouldn't a sizable portion of the electorate in San Francisco object in the name of affordable housing to building new housing in the space left behind by unused parking?

> object in the name of affordable housing to building new housing

Doesn't building more housing increase housing affordability? Why would they object?

Comprehensive sex education and access to contraception generally decreases rates of teen pregnancy. People still object to those two things in the name of avoiding teen pregnancy.

No, in fact neighborhood groups generally get upset if new housing goes up without parking as it is believed the new residents will put additional pressure on public parking spots.

> Just get rid of the parking

Might as well get rid of the people too while you are at it.

You do know there are real, actual, humans that use those parking spots right? It's not like the car needs the spot. A person needs the spot.

The goal of a city is to provide services for the PEOPLE. One of those services is parking, because PEOPLE need to park.

> Enough with being nice to people that drive personal cars into Manhattan.

Yes, definitely, kick all the people out. Who needs them, right?

I think the intent behind the comment was to suggest that the parking is a need based on a superfluous want, and is intended as a criticism of cities that do have major transit systems which capitulated to the demand for car access. NYC has pretty substantial public transit presence that could and probably should be the transit answer for far more people, however, people chose cars for a variety of reasons.

For some of the population, cars probably are a necessity; commuting may not always have a convenient transit option into the city and as such these people have a legitimate need. What the article, and likely the commenter, are suggesting, is that the "need" for parking is a result of a want for cars, not a need for cars, and the article is suggesting the trend is reversing. I think the commenter is suggesting is that it's time to start discouraging those who would take a car when they really don't need to, especially in high density urban populations with substantial public transit presence, and that with an alternative on the horizon, it's time for cities to start reclaiming space that was formerly given to parking.

Tangential to this response, I am pretty glad to see that the article takes a more realistic look at the future with self-driving cars. I have been reading comments and articles for a long time where people envision "their" self-driving car, but I've always thought it far more practical to have fleets of these cars instead that are summoned rather than owned by an individual.

Have you ever driven in NY? Anyone who drives a car there needs to, rather than wants to.

So I was mocking the idea that making things harder for people who already have no choice about driving is a good idea.

It's not.

You want less cars? Then make the alternatives better, people will automatically drive less. To try to change things from the other end is just a way to torment your fellow man.

I find it difficult to believe that compared to cities of similar size and population density that New York citizens have a greater need for cars. The other similarly sized/populous cities all rely far more heavily on mass transit than New Yorkers appear to, many of the cities that are more populated/larger than New York also are far more mass-transit focused. (Not to say that cars/congestion issues do no exist in said cities, it's just that a greater % of the population rides instead of drives)

What about New York makes it so different that driving is an absolute necessity as opposed to say, London? And what creates the need for ownership as opposed to a fleet of automated cars handling the movement around the city? I can envision how a car might be important for occasional living errands, like groceries, etc., but car ownership as a need? Could not the majority of New Yorker needs be filled by either street services like Car2Go/Zipcar or by a fleet of summonable self-driving cars?

You do know self driving cars don't actually exist yet? When they do we can make changes, but don't start getting rid of parking ahead of time.

New York attracts workers from all over, many from places without trains etc.

London is also jam packed, I'm not sure it's any different.

Yes...I'm not sure why you would think I suggested otherwise.

There's no reason that the preparation can't start happening sooner, especially since an intermediary step towards self-driving cars exists and that's car share fleets.

The whole point of self-driving cars is less about the tech itself and more about the cultural shift that it permits. Parts of that shift can be happening now - the problems with parking, congestion, costs of road maintenance, car accidents, and everything can be addressed and affected now.

The proposed changes work just as well for a fleet of shared cars as they do for self-driving.

London's population density is far less than that of NYC, with London having nearly twice the total area and nearly half the population density. My reason in mentioning the density is that even though London does have a large car population, far more people take transit in a place that has a larger population and a larger area. NYC, which is smaller and more population dense, should see its citizens having easier access to essential stores and location just due to proximity, where as a London citizen may need to travel considerably further.

> There's no reason that the preparation can't start happening sooner

There is a very good reason. Without the actual cars the preparation makes things worse for everyone. So why do it? It's like saying "I'm going to get a bike to go to work, so I better stop driving now, even though I don't actually have a way to go there."

On top of that, despite all the excitement in the tech field it'll actually be many many decades before general purpose self driving cars exist. We don't need 30 years of preparation.

At first they will only be used on long distance highway trips, with specially prepared and marked roads, with the human taking over for city driving and for roads not prepared.

But these preparations are about city driving, which won't be automatic for a very very very long time. (How does a self driving car, without true AI, know what to do when there is an illegally parked car in the road? Or a stopped garbage truck, and the works are waving you to go around them?)

> NYC, which is smaller and more population dense

The greater NYC area is not smaller than London. People come from a hundred miles away, every day, to work there.

Are you focused excessively on people living in Manhattan? They already take public transportation.

This is an example of an approach to social problems I sometimes see that I'm going to call "sink or swim". It is a form of proposal framed in terms like "Well, if we do this, it will force $group to either $do_what_we_want or $something_really_unpleasant" and then assumes that everyone in the group will just choose to do what the proposer wants them to do, because the alternative is unthinkable and possible horrific.

It is in fact the case that if you take your child and toss them into the middle of the pool, you do force them to either sink or swim. But that isn't the same thing as actually getting them to swim.

> Yes, definitely, kick all the people out. Who needs them, right?

3/4s of Manhattanites do not even own a car, let alone drive it in the city as their main form of transportation.

Yes, enough with catering to Jersey and LI people that are for some reason unwilling to use the perfectly fine NJT, PATH, and LIRR trains. If they will not use mass transit and expect to store their personal vehicle on some of the most expensive real estate in the world for free, yes, "kick them out".

I never liked vast seas of parking or sprawl. It's not my thing; I like compactness. I prefer safe, crime free, walkable mass transit centered communities. I think it's more aesthetic, is better use of land, it's a healthier way to live, to experience the place you grow and die in.

But, I loathe people telling people how things should be and what should better. Things will change organically, just as they organically changed from sodden cow and horse manure filled roads to paved, car filled roads. So too will cars acquiesce to something else. But stop, stop the condescension and promulgation that all that is car is bad. When something better comes along, people will choose the better thing.

For good or bad, in the US, China, Japan, Europe and Africa, people choose cars when they're useful. Cars aren't foisted onto them. Yes, choices in development matter, but that's an altogether different topic.

Back to aesthetics, while I would enjoy fewer cars and parking spaces, I do not look forward to buildings built closer together like in the middle ages. They're nice when you're taking a stroll, but they are impractical for emergencies, when people need to evacuate, when emergency vehicles need access. I prefer wide streets even in the absence of cars [ever experience mid rises banging against each other in an earthquake?]

Maybe you don't know it but cities are designed. There are urban planners who decide who to organise an area, public governements decide what land is open to what kind of buildings, etc.

So decisions are taken about how to organise cities, and it's been this way for centuries.

See how Haussmann transformed Paris in the 19th century for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...

More topically, parking is built because city planners and local and state laws require it. It isn't optional, developers can't choose to organically build less over time, it isn't a matter of choice, and it won't acquiesce into anything else.

And the predominance of parking everywhere in America didn't just happen. It was mandated by law.

First world cities with low parking requirements have much less than 5% as much parking as American cities do. Because that is what people will build voluntarily and pay for.

Small anecdote on the parking requirement - in the LA suburb I live in one of the local coffee shops has a large 'seating' area which is nearly devoid of actual seating. Asking the staff why they didn't install more chairs and tables, they said they were not allowed to have more tables than parking spaces, and their location only had a few parking spaces.

So when I walk there I have no place to sit because - well, why would anyone not drive and park to get their latte fix?

By organically I meant people petition, change laws pass ordinances etc at their pace.

Speaking of low parking slot cities, ever enjoy having sidewalks and pavement taken up by parked cars. Slots or not, people park their cars.

Tokyo requires that car owners prove they have a reserved parking stall before allowing them to register a vehicle. That takes care of sidewalk parking.

But the easiest way to eliminate sidewalk parking is to install meters on the street spaces. Then the local authorities will promptly tow sidewalk parkers for meter evasion. The problem only crops up where parking is mandated and free.

Leys see how that works out on counties with corruption endemic at low levels of enforcement.

Mexico City had no parking meters six years ago and a serious sidewalk parking problem. As the new meters go into neighborhoods, the local parking cops (on bicycles with a trailer full of Denver boots) detain illegal parkers.

It works absolutely great. The neighborhood has new cash to spend on improvements and there's legal space to park in for a price.

The problem I see with shared cars is that people like to forget stuff in their cars. Cellphones, ID bages, food, wallets, bags...

When I park my car at my workplace and I notice my badge fell out of my pants (or I forgot it), no problem, I can head back to the car and get my badge. If I take a cab I can always phone the cab central and have them ask the driver to look for the item (of course, this requires honest cab drivers and it will cost me a huge amount of money if the cab driver is already on the other end of the city by the time I notice). No way at all to do so with an autonomous car.

Also, a shift to autonomous cars would prevent another very common use case: after work I might want to do something else before driving home, like going to sports training. So now I'd have to carry my gun and ammo (or my sport gear, or ...) all the time around with me instead of leaving the stuff in my car.

Also, my own car still is freedom: public transport, even in Germany, shuts down after 2200 and restarts only at 0500, and if you're outside the city you rarely have time intervals for buses and trains lower than 20min - often it's more like 40min, 60min or even 120min. With a shared car system, I'd have to wait totally unpredictable amounts of time until a shared car is free, and there's nothing I hate more than waiting.

Getting people off individual cars would require absolutely massive investment in public transport. Might work out in cities, but in rural areas there's no way you can get people to abandon their cars.

> The problem I see with shared cars is that people like to forget stuff in their cars.

And the amount of your stuff will seem miniscule once you have kids. Car seats for different ages, extra food, water, diapers, sets of clothing, iPad holders, random toys, sports equipment, school supplies, and the list goes on.

> So now I'd have to carry my gun and ammo (or my sport gear, or ...)

Of course there are all kinds of little assumptions in our daily lives that would suddenly change and have to be addressed. In this case though, do you really need 170 sq. feet to store whatever you are carrying with you? Opening parking lots to development will generate enough value to provide a couple 12x18x72 inch lockers for each space removed. That still clears up over 98% of the square footage currently being taken up by parking spaces, and it would obviate the need to use cars for personal storage.

It might even lower theft since a big component of theft from automobiles is that a thief can look into a bunch of cars and only break in when something valuable enough is identified. And since lockers could be located inside where the people are, it would probably opportunities for would be thieves to have alone time with valuables.

> people like to forget stuff in their cars

If cars begin to be produced primarily for the purpose of transporting a single different person over and over again all day (with a smaller number of multi-passenger vehicles being produced for the relatively rare case of multi-passenger rides), then I imagine that eventually they would evolve a design that makes it more obvious when you drop things you are carrying. Currently cars[1] have all kinds of nooks and crannies for your wallet to fall into, because it's not that big a problem in most cases when you do that. But it would be fairly trivial to add a little fiber glass hip that sits flush with the seat. You would have to relocate the seat adjustment controls, but a lot of vehicles have already centralized those controls on the main console, and ridesharing vehicles would actually see enough benefit to consider such a change.

[1] this includes taxis because taxis fleets are made up of essentially consumer vehicles. This makes sense, because you always have at least 2 people in a taxi, so you can't really comfortably make it that much smaller. But if there were fleets of rideshared self-driving cars everywhere, most cars would only need to carry a single person, and you can drastically reduce the size of a one-person car without sacrificing comfort.

Edit: added third paragraph and the accompanying footnote

> with a smaller number of multi-passenger vehicles being produced for the relatively rare case of multi-passenger rides

You clearly have no children. Most people do though. Multi-passenger rides are hardly rare. Going to work is not the only thing people use a car for.

I have a child, that's beside the point. I also live in an Austin, TX suburb, so am pretty driving dependent. My comment is not naive due to inexperience with the occasional necessity of having to move multiple people around.

Objectively, the majority of driving is single passenger during commute time. I said multi-passenger trips are "relatively rare", that is, less common. I don't even see what could possibly be offending you in my comment. Yes, many people have children, and most of them drive mostly alone in one of their two cars 15 miles both ways to and from work. I don't see this as controversial. I'm not being remotely hyperbolic.

You are focusing on commute to work - yes, that's big. But people drive at other times too, and that is not rare at all. (That's the part I object to, that you think it's rare. Rare to me means less than 1% of the other, but actually it's more like 50%.)

Do you take your kids to buy groceries? To ship a package? You don't have to take them, but kids like to go.

You are still misreading what I've written? I said "relatively rare". That does not mean "rare". It means less common than the scenario being compared with. If lone commuting is 51% of driving, and multi-passenger is 49% of driving, it would not be inaccurate to say that multi-passenger driving is relatively rare when compared to lone commuting. I am not saying that multi-passenger trips rarely happen.

To reiterate, I am saying that more miles are driven single passenger (excluding hired drivers) than multi-passenger, and that is the only claim that I am making on the subject.

I trust we have that cleared up now. It means that once it makes sense to have driverless car fleets chauffeuring people around in cities, it will likely make economic sense to make a lot of those vehicles single passenger, because they can be made much more cheaply and run more efficiently. This is not really possible with the current consumer car industry, because consumers want the capability to drive more than one person (whether they have kids or not), even if most of the driving they do is alone. Likewise taxis are always moving at minimum two people when it's making money.

And I don't see any reason there wouldn't still be plentiful multi-passenger cars. I'm not trying to banish multi-passenger car trips from society. I'm not against them! They are just currently "relatively rare" in practice. I could see electric cars potentially increasing adult carpooling, or reducing it. For instance, maybe a car service has a fleet of minvans, and offers discount rates, but fills itself to capacity on the way to your general destination. Or maybe carpooling among adults with different starting and ending points ultimately essentially goes away, like if tiny single passenger driverless vehicles in constant use end up being more efficient than carpooling once all the numbers are in. Even in that case there would still be multi-passenger cars, because there are always going to be people who want to go on dates, or out with friends, adults that need to accompany kids and any number of other reasons that people choose to travel together. Driverless cars don't get rid of the need for multi-passenger cars. They get rid of the incentives that cause people to waste full size cars on one person trips. They unlock the potential for cars to further specialize to improve efficiency.

A consumer car needs to be multi-passenger. A driverless fleet car doesn't. It makes sense then that the fleets that service a given area would tend to try to balance the number of single passenger and multi-passenger vehicles in their fleet to match the demand for these two types of trips. That's really all I'm getting at with this line of thought. I'm not making a strong statement about the single vs multi-passenger composition of trips.

You did clear it up, except relatively rare does not mean that.

You can't make up new definitions for things and expect people to understand you.

Relatively rare has the same meaning as rare, except that it's rare only in comparison with the compared event, but might not be rare on an absolute scale.

So, no, 49% is not relatively rare.

1% is relatively rare, yet 1% of car trips is still an enormous number so is not actually rare. That is the only change in the meaning when you add the word relatively.

Getting back to your actual point, which was derailed by an incorrect word.

Multi car trips are less common, but not enough to make single passenger vehicles economically worth it. The majority of the expense on a vehicle is not the cabin. Once you paid to make a car, adding a bit more space for additional people costs only a little bit more, but greatly increases the flexibility.

So I don't expect the basic size of a car to change much.

Any child old enough for a school bus is also old enough for a self-driving taxi (age 8 or less). So that's most school/sports/activity runs out of the picture. And if you live in a city, your kindergarten and primary schools is generally 10 minutes' walk away or less.

But yes, there will be self-driving taxis of all sizes, just like there are ubers and rental cars of all sizes now.

> Any child old enough for a school bus is also old enough for a self-driving taxi (age 8 or less). So that's most school/sports/activity runs out of the picture. And if you live in a city, your kindergarten and primary schools is generally 10 minutes' walk away or less.

Thank God I won't ever become a teacher. I can already imagine kids saying "I forgot my homework in my taxi and couldn't call it back in time"...

How is that any different from "I forgot my homework on the bus, and it left immediately after it dropped me off."

Kids like going on trips (for example to the store, or the post office) with the parents, even when there is no reason for them to go. Multi-passenger trips will equally as common as single.

> No way at all to do so with an autonomous car.

How can you say that when they aren't even a thing yet? They could easily have a hotline to call in case of a situation like this, where they can manually pull it out of the queue and send it back to your location. It wouldn't be complicated or costly.

What if another passenger has already taken the vehicle? Then you'd totally depend on the honesty of a stranger.

Thanks but no thanks.

Meta: What's with the bizarre downvoting of non-anti-car comments in this thread? It's like anything that isn't 100% in favor of a shared-everything-screw-the-rurals-and-introverts economy is anathema or something. Maybe instead of downvoting, why don't you (whoever "you" may be) try to figure out why people have a different opinion than you? Maybe you'll find that the world is a heck of a lot bigger than you imagined and people exist who really do have different experiences and needs.

I cannot speak for the people down voting, but I can understand frustration with raising objections based on wants and desires which are not incompatible with cities focusing more on mass transit and self-driving fleets.

Folk who do live in rural areas won't be impacted much by cities transitioning to fewer cars. If their work requires commute into the city, I'm not sure why or how the commute would be any worse once self-driving cars are introduced. The idea is to reduce car dependence and the control cars have within cities. Assume for a moment that self-driving cars can participate nigh-perfectly in traffic with human drivers, and that they become the majority within cities. Would this not mean that as car ownership in cities goes down, available parking may decrease, but the demand for parking will also decrease?

As an introvert myself, I don't really have an issue with mass transit, since most everyone just wants to mind their own business. Once there are self-driving cars or once city culture shifts from car ownership to fleets of available cars, nothing is stopping you from having complete privacy as you travel if you desire it.

What I'm saying is that these concerns aren't incompatible with the share ideas. Your normal routine might be slightly different, but your wants and needs are not incompatible with the ideas at all.

I dislike downvote/upvote systems for discussion for the very reason you're expressing; it creates echo chambers, but it also expresses their position. I disagree with you, but I will tell you that it's because I think your wants and needs can be met perfectly if cities shift to less cars. Others apparently would rather just down vote to express their disagreement.

> Folk who do live in rural areas won't be impacted much by cities transitioning to fewer cars.

Oh they will because non-automated cars will have their insurance rates rising (once again, a tax on the poor, because rich people tend to concentrate in urban areas while poorer people will be outpriced to rural), they will be banned from driving in urban areas, and there will be no parking in the cities for them.

Because HN is full of urban hipsters whose viewport is limited to their city.

Do you refuse to go to restaurants because you're afraid that you might drop your wallet in a booth? Sure you can call the restaurant, but what if another customer already sat there and took it?

I'm pretty sure this problem isn't nearly as big as you think it is.

Restaurants don't drive off to somewhere else the instant you step out of them.

This was directed at the OP who said taxi's are OK because you can call the taxi company, but self driving cars aren't because if you don't call before someone else rides in the car you're stuff will be gone.

My response is that a restaurant works the same way. If you don't return or call before someone else sits there, you're stuff will be gone.

Addressing your point, taxis and buses immediately drive off after you step out of them. Do you avoid them because of this?

Ride-hailing apps will eventually take on urban storage as well. Want to avoid carrying something around? Press a button in an app. Want to use the thing you left? Press a button in an app. Want your stuff to head home with you? Press a button in an app.

Great, if you value those things so much you can pay to own your own vehicle (which you're basically using as a storage bin).

But I think that there are a lot of people who would gladly cut down on the $8K-$10K/year of car costs.

Indeed. I definitely use my car to carry a variety of tools and equipment with me all of the time, including emergency supplies. I'd have to start wearing like... a purse or something to keep even a fraction of that with me.

Regarding hours... realizing the bus to your hotel in Iceland is no longer in service at 2 AM in a snowstorm in March is super excitng.

What about car sharing schemes such as Car2Go, Zipcar, etc, where you pay just for the amount of time you use the car? Unlike autonomous cars, these are available now and proven to be successful.

Here in Rome Car2Go have over 600 cars, so you are usually no more than 5 minutes walk from one. You can also leave it anywhere in the 'home zone', rather than having to find a specific car sharing parking space. There is also another service run by the city that has a similar number of cars. The prices are quite high, but if you just need it for odd trips (i.e. not commuting every day) it's still going to be cheaper than owning a car, and a lot easier than having to deal with public transport.

These autonomous cars are hardly a full solution.

Or do you expect parents to attach car seats each time they call one up? And where do you put the car seats the rest of the time? Cary them along with you?

It would be nice if the cars came with them built in, but I don't think it's possible to make a seat that can accommodate every size child.

Why would it be so hard to drop the car seat requirement? Taxis are exempt from them, the security benefits are questionable already (more so once you factor that an autonomous car would probably have a different cabin and safety features), buses and trains don't need them...

Not to mention that a society that gets away from being car centric would also grant more independency to children from their parents. In Japan, kids are used to go to school by themselves at age 5. In Berlin I see kids seemlingly from elementary school going around alone in the U-Bahn. Looks like parents not having to be kids' chauffeurs would be a net gain.

You'd have your own private autonomous car. You could keep the car seats, clutter, etc in it.

It would drive you to work, then it would drive itself home and park there (or at an out-of-town free space) instead of parking in the city.

Later, it drives itself back to your office to pick you up.

No shared car required, no parking space either.

Yeah? Go to a place like China or India where there is no place to park your car. Nowadays almost everyone in the world have a car so we need place to park. If you don't want to own a car it is your problem. The new generation is losing independence FAST....

> Nowadays almost everyone in the world have a car

In Helsinki, less than half of households have cars. In many areas of central Helsinki, more than 60% are carless. I'd be surprised if car ownership was significantly more popular in other European cities. If there's good public transit and the city is walkable, a car is a waste of money for most people.

Random data point: There were 342 cars registered per 1000 citizens in Berlin in 2014 [0]. Same in other (large) cities I have lived in in Europe.

Typically, using the public transport in Berlin will be much quicker than taking the car.

[0] Sorry, article in German (and BZ..): http://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/immer-mehr-autobesitzer-aber-...

That is the point of the article though, nearly everyone has a car and that is causing issues.

I think for housing at least, building vertically is a good solution to storage of a car. Expensive of course but practical.

Underground parking for businesses would also be good, moving parking off the streets is always nice.

Unless, by moving parking away from streets you then just use it for more moving cars. That creats a very hostile and noisy environment.

Sometimes the parked cars are a nice buffer between the street and pedestrians.

Regardless, I wish our central city was nothing but walk and bicycle paths. It would be much more enjoyable and I would spend more time here.

"Sometimes the parked cars are a nice buffer between the street and pedestrians."

Sure, but the current design of the sidewalk has to accommodate a car door opening at any point, as someone could park anywhere. When roads are no longer used for parking, sidewalks could be lined with a narrow strip of trees or something, with a gap every 100m for cars to load/unload passengers.